tasonir wrote:This is either going to be helpful or useless to you depending on your crawl background, but if you want to do a DUZH hellcrawl victory then the strategies that are good at this are exactly the same that are good for speedruns in normal crawl, for the same reasons. Doing such a short run is basically the same thing as a turncount speedrun. Look at the
high score list to see what strategies people use for those.
Hint: VSMo ^ Chei is #1
I don't think this is entirely coincident. I mean there is a soild point in that many concerns are shared, but I think certain things for speedruns are much more emphasized such that I would hesitate to recommend for a HC branchless. Basically, and I won with Chei in eariler versions of hellcrawl more than once, I do not think Chei is good for depthless and I am pretty certain that Chei is not better than Sif (and a couple of other special combos). This is even with Torpor Knight being an easier/faster chei start than Monk and finding an altar.
I seriously seriously doubt a VSMo can do DUZH runs nearly as reliably as a DEIE/FE of Sif. It is probably true that as Chei if you did manage depthless you get a better score due to his effect on turncount, but I think it will be alot harder.
I understand that Chei can give a nice early stat boost to "mature" your char early etc. and this is mainly one reason I did Chei a lot in earlier HC version. Getting strong by d10 is nice. But other combos can do the same thing without the huge downside.
If we were to evaluate a combo/strat based upon how often various people acutally won with it rather than high score, I feel very confident that various Sif-based combos will beat out pretty any Chei combo. Even if the high score was a Chei combo. However Branchelss scores are shitty anyway since you have so few runes.
Certain combos of start and god are far more likely to get the necessary tools by d15 when you have to make the D->U final decision. Just that alone is a huge factor in addition to the overall capabilities, of which I think Chei is far more likely to get you killed than many other gods as well. And in hellcrawl Zot at level 20-21 this is a very important consideration. The nature of encounters in HC Zot means you can get into very bad situations that Chei's slow is extremely bad for. He does give you some tools but overall I think, personally, think its a significant extra risk that is not worth it.
I view a char's ability to survive Zot at level 20-22 as a major determining factor for an HC DUZH run. A lot of that is actually knowledge based as its more about avodinig/escpaing the truly bad situations. But Chei radically changes that as you either need much more escapes or need to be more lucky.
Another key factor for DUZH run is the D->U transition and whether you can clear Elf which typically takes extreme care on D1 to get to Elf. Being Chei makes sneaking over to Elf and not getting overhwhlemed much much harder.
Typically I find the Sif skill boosts to be roughly equivalent to Chei's stat boosts, although somewhat altered utility. Addtionally while Sif's spellbooks are not really great early on, you are considerably more likely to find a key spell you can use for depths (a conjuration or haste or malign gateway).
Putting all that together you are far more likely to get a char to a mature enough point to carefully take on D1 and later on Zot when you take some combos that give various "maturation" benefits that are in combination better than Chei and don't have the downside that I feel are incredibly dangerous in Zot specifically. Now granted you are not gonna really run from a pack of robins even when you are not chei, but with chei all your escape options are seriously curtailed and narrowed down and I feel this is the worst possible thing for getting through Zot.
Finally DE have charms apt 4 and this makes them much better in hellcrawl. A DE* of Sif can get Haste castable amazingly early and is far more likely to find haste. For a DUZH run this is a really big deal especially since your branchless decision is completely final and pretty early really. The same is true for combos that want something specific like dragon or statue form.
Edit: Also not being able to cast haste makes Chei a second rate god in general as far as power when compared to some other gods. One of the best reasons to get Chei at all is the Int boost but you can't even use one of the top 5 spells you would even want the spellcasting boost for.